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Jul. 8th, 2008 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI reread Diana Wynne Jones' Black Maria on the way back from Boston, because I'd lent it to Gen ages ago to read (and she actually did, which is why she is my favorite), she had just given it back to me and I am incapable of not reading a Diana Wynne Jones book when I have one in my hands. It is a complicated book, and one I have been thinking about in one way or another for a long time, so I am going to take the chance to set out some of my thoughts about it here.
Black Maria can be described as The One Where Diana Wynne Jones Takes On Gender Roles - it's set in the little town of Cranbury-on-Sea, where the main character Mig's great-aunt Maria and her coffee-klatching, Public Works Committee-running minion ladies have a strange control over the town. This seems at first to fall straight into the set of books where Women With Power Are Evil, and it might have come off that way if the narrator had been Mig's older brother, Chris, instead of Mig herself. But because it's Mig telling the story (and because it's Diana Wynne Jones writing, and she is much more complicated than that) instead you get, I think, a book that shows how traditional sexism and gender roles affect, not just women, but men as well. There's a bit that sums up a lot of what the book is about, to me, where Mig is talking about her father with her mother. It is longish, so I will put it (and my analysis; oh god, once an English major, always an English major) under a cut.
She said, musingly, 'I should have left him then, I suppose. But you were going to be born, and I did hope he'd learn - learn that people aren't just a set of rules, or at least learn he could learn. But he never did, Mig.'
Now I'm grateful that Mum said that. It explains the sort of hold Zenobia Bayley must have on Dad. You can see, with every word she says, that Zenobia is the sort of girl who plays by the rules. Dad likes that. I bet she uses the rules just the way Aunt Maria does, to make him feel guilty and do things for her. But he probably expects that.
Basically, I think the book is in large part about the rules, and how to break them. The male character who represents playing by the rules in that way, Mr. Phelps, is nearly as bad; he almost refuses to speak to Mig and snaps at his sick elderly sister, and it seems fairly clear that were he in charge, instead of Aunt Maria, life in Cranbury would be very little better. Aunt Maria herself is an absolutely terrifying villain because of how she uses the rules; it's not that she can do terrifying magical things, though she can, it's that she very sweetly and passively-aggressively guilts you into creating the universe she wants, and we have all had a relative or known someone like that who could do that.
Chris, Mig's older brother, rebels loudly in all kinds of ways, but he's given allowance and expected to be Difficult, because he's a boy, up until the point where he crosses the line. Mig, on the other hand, as a potential holder of female power, is expected to be surface-sweet and use Aunt Maria's ways of manipulating people. Due to this, she finds herself suffocatingly unable to let her feelings show; one of her main character arcs is about the way she finally manages to express her rebellion openly.
I would tell people to read this book anyways, because the characters are fabulous, the book is very funny in places and thoroughly creepy in others, and I will maintain that Aunt Maria is one of the best villains of all time due to the sheer creeping ordinariness of her. But I really especially want people to read it so I can see what they make of the bizarre gendered mini-universe set up there. There are some very strange things in the book I can't even start talking about or I will be writing all day, so . . . I will stop here.
Black Maria can be described as The One Where Diana Wynne Jones Takes On Gender Roles - it's set in the little town of Cranbury-on-Sea, where the main character Mig's great-aunt Maria and her coffee-klatching, Public Works Committee-running minion ladies have a strange control over the town. This seems at first to fall straight into the set of books where Women With Power Are Evil, and it might have come off that way if the narrator had been Mig's older brother, Chris, instead of Mig herself. But because it's Mig telling the story (and because it's Diana Wynne Jones writing, and she is much more complicated than that) instead you get, I think, a book that shows how traditional sexism and gender roles affect, not just women, but men as well. There's a bit that sums up a lot of what the book is about, to me, where Mig is talking about her father with her mother. It is longish, so I will put it (and my analysis; oh god, once an English major, always an English major) under a cut.
Now I'm grateful that Mum said that. It explains the sort of hold Zenobia Bayley must have on Dad. You can see, with every word she says, that Zenobia is the sort of girl who plays by the rules. Dad likes that. I bet she uses the rules just the way Aunt Maria does, to make him feel guilty and do things for her. But he probably expects that.
Basically, I think the book is in large part about the rules, and how to break them. The male character who represents playing by the rules in that way, Mr. Phelps, is nearly as bad; he almost refuses to speak to Mig and snaps at his sick elderly sister, and it seems fairly clear that were he in charge, instead of Aunt Maria, life in Cranbury would be very little better. Aunt Maria herself is an absolutely terrifying villain because of how she uses the rules; it's not that she can do terrifying magical things, though she can, it's that she very sweetly and passively-aggressively guilts you into creating the universe she wants, and we have all had a relative or known someone like that who could do that.
Chris, Mig's older brother, rebels loudly in all kinds of ways, but he's given allowance and expected to be Difficult, because he's a boy, up until the point where he crosses the line. Mig, on the other hand, as a potential holder of female power, is expected to be surface-sweet and use Aunt Maria's ways of manipulating people. Due to this, she finds herself suffocatingly unable to let her feelings show; one of her main character arcs is about the way she finally manages to express her rebellion openly.
I would tell people to read this book anyways, because the characters are fabulous, the book is very funny in places and thoroughly creepy in others, and I will maintain that Aunt Maria is one of the best villains of all time due to the sheer creeping ordinariness of her. But I really especially want people to read it so I can see what they make of the bizarre gendered mini-universe set up there. There are some very strange things in the book I can't even start talking about or I will be writing all day, so . . . I will stop here.
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Date: 2008-07-08 05:56 pm (UTC)I just finished In the Garden of Iden.
I think I need a band-aid FOR MY SOUL.
[/irrelevant]
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Date: 2008-07-08 05:59 pm (UTC)*passes the tea RIGHT QUICK*
asfdsdfsjkl isn't it amazing though?
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Date: 2008-07-08 06:00 pm (UTC)I do like that it sets up all of these rules in a way that seems so very problematic -- the women with the power that they Use Badly in a very specifically gendered kind of way, the men buying into the same system and oppressed and rebelling without ever questioning the base assumptions -- and then turns out to be a book all about the need to do exactly that questioning, for both sexes. To break the rules, as you say, and question everything, and be firmly yourself instead of allying with one 'side' or another in a system of dichotomies. Even if some of the ways it plays out are weird, and I'm not sure yet what I think of them.
(Mig, however, is totally awesome. But we knew this.)
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Date: 2008-07-08 06:03 pm (UTC)And yes. On this read, I was really noticing how much emphasis Mig puts on not wanting to pick a side, on not following the rules, and how there's so much pressure on her to do just that. And I love her. I'd forgotten about 'nacreous'!
(But some of it's so weird. I still have no idea what the hell to make of Elaine. Or Miss Phelps, for that matter.)
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Date: 2008-07-08 06:10 pm (UTC)And both Mig and her mother refuse to do that at all. They help out certain men and certain women, but only so far, and try to steer their own course.
I think we talked about how nice it is that her mother gets the role and involvement she does, yeah? Since we are totally predictable.
(I know! So weird. Help jog my memory -- Elaine is the second-in-command sort who's kind of nicer but in a very complicated way, and there's that whole bit with Chris the wolf? And Miss Phelps I remember being rather saner than her brother -- okay, not hard -- but not doing a ton, except to say "Stop being a difficult moron, dear" to him every so often with some effect?)
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Date: 2008-07-08 06:10 pm (UTC)Towards the end - about 50 pages, or so - I kept having to stop and re-read, just because I couldn't believe that paragraphs/sentences so unbelievable and gutpunch-y could exist.
Joseph is my favourite forever. Especially pp. 310-320 (cell scene through to the end of the chapter). Oh my god.
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Date: 2008-07-08 06:49 pm (UTC)I love Joseph with a love that is greater than I can express. The cell scene BREAKS MY HEART. And the next book is completely Joseph-centric!
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Date: 2008-07-08 06:54 pm (UTC)(Yeah, Elaine is the second-in-command who's married to Boring Larry and helps out Chris but not Mig, because she likes boys. And wants to take over from Aunt Maria eventually. And Miss Phelps seems completely sane, and refuses to take sides too, but in a way that seems mostly to mean total inaction. She makes calm remarks to Aunt Maria about how the system is bound to lead to difficulty, but that's about it.)